While we were brushing our teeth this morning, or staring into the refrigerator to decide what to have for breakfast, contemplating whether to get a new ring tone for the phone, and going about yet another uneventful day in our mundane, but hopefully pleasant, existance spare a thought for what was going on during those very moments of domestic routine in a land far away both geographically and mentally.

A nuclear war is being waged - not your typical nuclear war of powerful, glowing mushroom-cloud blasts that reduce everything in their paths to blackened, flattened ruin, but a covert nuclear war using a mechanism that is just as deadly but not so obvious.

During the past few wars, starting with the Balkan wars, and the first Gulf War and on to Afghanistan and the current Iraq war, a major "improvement" to weapons has been in use. It was the tipping of munitions - bullets, shells and bombs with so-called Depleted Uranium. So-called because there is nothing really depleted about it. It is just as lethal un-depleted Uranium.

DU is a by-product of the Nuclear industry - a hitherto waste product and a problem to dispose of. Now the perfect solution was to put it to use making weapons more lethal.

This nuclear war has spread radioactive dust and refuse across the whole landscape where these munitions have been used. The immediate "benefit" of tipping weapons with DU is that it gives a multifold penetration power, hitherto not possible with regular weapons. Munitions can penetrate armour plating with ease and reduce tanks and buildings to ruin. When they explode the power is immense, causing a massive fireball that engulfs all, burning or vapourising its hapless victims without mercy.

This is the immediate horror of war - that we rarely hear about or see. (What we do see and hear about is the sanitised version.)

The aftermath of the immediate horror is the after-horror - over 1000 tonnes of DU has been deployed in the current war in Iraq. The chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in 1986 released 700 tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Over 20,000 bombs (many DU tipped) were deployed in Afghanistan up to mid 2002. "The DU explosive charges in the guided bomb systems used in Afghanistan can weigh as much as one and a half metric tons - as in Raytheon’s Bunker Buster - GBU-28" (Le Monde March 2002)

This material gets into the soil, leaches into plants, rises in dust when the ground is disturbed, gets into the lungs and seeps into the skin of local populations, and the soldiers of both sides, and is carried around the world on the winds.

Children playing on and around destroyed tanks and battlefields are particularly susceptable.

"Children rather than adults may be considered to be more at risk of DU exposure when returning to normal activities within a war zone through contaminated food and water, since typical hand-to-mouth activity of inquisitive play could lead to high DU ingestion from contaminated soil." (The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 5, No 44, October 29, 2001

Soldiers exposed to radiation by the handling of these weapons and the dust released after they explode have been affected in large numbers.

The first Gulf War resulted in a very low official US soldier death toll and 7035 injured.

The reality is that of 580,000 soldiers who served in that war 325,000 are on permanent medical disabilty and 11,000 have subsequently died - an astonishing figure of 56% of those who served are now seriously ill with radiation related sicknesses, eupehmistically labelled "Gulf War Syndrome" by the medical and military establishments that refuse, of course, to acknowledge its true cause. Typical official explanations are dust storms, reaction to vaccines, exposure to pesticides. Other "official studies" try to further whitewash the situation by inadequate tests on military personnel who were not exposed to the dangers, and subsequently reporting "negligable or zero" levels of radiation in their urine.

Since dust storms, vaccines and pesticides are not known to cause cancers of the magnitude being experienced then the DU issue is front and centre of suspicion.

From the 2003 Iraq invasion, in one US military unit alone, eight out of twenty soldiers have developed malignancies. That is 40% have become seriously ill only 16 months after being exposed to the radiation.

Throughout Iraq (and Afghanistan) doctors are reporting frightening statistics of hitherto unseen levels of hideous birth defects, and radiation sickness related conditions in a wide cross section of the population.

For the people of Iraq the lack of adequate medical facilities, and indeed proper infrastructure of power, water and supply shortages means that any semblance of proper treatment is usually next to impossible and the situation is totally futile.

Don’t forget that during the "Sanctions" against Iraq between the two wars - it is reported that over 500,000 children died as a result of lack of medical and other supplies. A figure that former Secretary Of State, Madeline Albright said was "worth it".

For the soldier who unwittingly has been exposed to high doses of radiation, the threat is not only immediate to his or her own wellbeing but the danger is brought home. The reproductive system becomes a radioactive infection agent, passing on damaged genes to their offspring and even to their spouses.

In a group of 251 soldiers in Missouri who had produced normal babies prior to deployment to the first Gulf War, 67% of post-war babies were born with severe defects - missing arms, eyes, legs and with rare immune and blood diseases.

Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, when asked about what efffect DU contamination has upon the body explained that the effects of uranium contamination targets the DNA. This causes a multitude of medical conditions that are typically vague and far reaching - in effect the body is "trashed".

When asked if the main purpose for using DU was not only improving weapon performance but indirectly to cause maximum destruction to life, she was blunt - “I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.”

The first DU weapons were produced in 1968 for the US navy and early, crude versions were used by Israel against the Arabs in the Yom Kippur war of 1973. DU weapons have been subsequently sold by the US to 29 countries. Thousands of tons of DU weapons were tested in the US between 1974 and 1999, and contamination from these tests resulted in a dramatic increase in cancers and leukemia rates of those living around the test facilities.

The military again denies any connection to DU.

A new book by Michael Collins Piper, published by American Free Press, “The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America’s Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire,” details how the US administration neocons led by Henry Kissinger from as far back as the late 1960s had formulated plans to launch wars against the Arab world. This manifested itself into "The War Against Terror", after the 911 atrocity - which, by the way, was NOT caused by a bunch of Arabs living in caves, but that’s a different altogether more scary story. The book delves into the creation of the neocons - by Trotsky lover Irving Kristol - whose son is currently one of the most influential men in the US.
The Israeli lobby’s neocon network has strong links with Kissinger and other notables as George Schultz, Zbignew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz, Samuel S Huntington, and of course the more visible Cheney, Rumsfeld and not to forget the media contingent -for example our own Rupert Murdoch - hence the rabid support of the Iraq war on Foxnews and why you would never hear about the DU story or the true reasons for the Iraq [and onward-Christian-soldier invasions still to come] on Fox or any other mainstream network.
In Brzezinski’s book “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. One of those regions (Afghanistan and Iraq) is currently laid waste with DU radiation.

The US, Australia and Britain went to war with Iraq based on a totally fabricated premise that Iraq possessed "Weapons Of Mass Destruction". Ironically the United Nations defines the use of Depleted Uranium as a "Weapon Of Mass Destruction".
The "coallition of the willing" are deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies Depleted Uranium munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.
According to an August 2002 report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing ’poison or poisoned weapons’ and ’arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering’. All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.
When we have the new US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, the man who set the groundrules regarding what is "acceptable torture" - saying that the Geneva Conventions are "quaint" - well you get an idea of the seriousness of the problem.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon’s depleted uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defence with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a ’war crime’.
Rokke said: ’...This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction -- yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves - such double-standards are repellent.’
Rokke added: ’A nation’s military personnel cannot wilfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions.
To do so is a crime against humanity.
It is equivalent to a war crime.’
Not only is it a War Crime, it is a War Crime in four ways.
Karen Parker JD, famous UN War Crimes and humanitarian lawyer stated "My ’four-point’ test is this:
"It spreads" (beyond the field of battle);
"it lasts" (can’t be turned off when the war ends);
"it injures people in impermissible ways" (as in making an as yet unborn child deformed); and
"it harms the environment".

Since the one and only time "real" nuclear weapons were used - Hiroshima and Nagasaki world opinion has not been favourable for the use of such destructive weapons - the Ultimate WMD.

Uranium-tipped bombs, shells and bullets are just different forms of slow-acting, nuclear weapons by stealth. They are slower than the instant big boom and flash of Nagasaki type Nuclear Weapons. Now we are using the next generation of nuclear weapons on the hapless civilians of Iraq - and our own soldiers, indeed the whole world, is going to pay a heavy price. Uranium weapons spread deadly radioactivity that kills and contaminates forever.

Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing!

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020.

So when you are filling up tomorrow’s breakfast dish with cereal - spare a sobering thought that those flakes of corn could be contaminated by an invisible danger - but even if they are not, rest assured that hundreds of thousands of people are.

Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged to consult:

References

1. Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: A death sentence here and abroad" by Leuren Moret,
http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Dep...

2. Bob Nichols - bobnichols@cox.net.
www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NIC5...
http://www.sfbayview.com/012605/hea...

Depleted Uranium - audio file - dr schultz and dr ali - appearing on Breakfornews.com
http://www.kathymcmahonutvinternet....

See Doco: The Doctor, The Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children - SBS TV Australia - to be repeated 2005 - call 1800 500 727 for details.

Additional research:
American Free Press four-part series on DU by
Christopher Bollyn.

Part I: "Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime
Against Iraq, Humanity,"
http://www.americanfreepress.net/ht...

Part II: "Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD:
http://www.americanfreepress.net/ht...

Part III: "DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care:
Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets",
http://www.americanfreepress.net/ht...

Part IV: "Pentagon Brass Suppresses Truth About Toxic Weapons: Poisonous Uranium Munitions Threaten World",
http://www.americanfreepress.net/ht...

August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret:
"Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,"
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/...